Girl Talk's All Day Samples Increased Sales of Songs, Study Shows

Gregg Gillis of Girl Talk fame has often found himself at the center of debates about the legality and impact of the sampling of copyrighted music. And he's generally the one on the defense. Now he's got a little something to add to his ammo—a new study on digital sampling shows that songs that were sampled on Girl Talk's 2010 album All Day experienced an uptick in sales after the album came out.

The study, which was conducted by Texas Judicial Law Clerk W. Michael Schuster, looked at more than 350 songs sampled on All Day and found that the copyrighted songs sold better in the year after the album was released than than in the year before. Based on his findings, Schuster suggests that maybe it's time for an "objective financial review of fair use and the market effect."

The study also looked into how the length of the sample and the previous popularity of the song affected sales:

The songs sampled in the subject album were evaluated to ascertain the length of each sample and to what degree each sampled song had experienced prior commercial success. This collected data was used to test the hypothesis that sampled songs which were more recognizable to listeners (e.g., songs that were commercial hits or songs that were sampled for a relatively longer period) would see a greater sales increase after being sampled. The collected data did not find a correlation in post-sampling sales increases and sample length or prior commercial success, but further study may be warranted.

All you methodology scholars, go forth and decide how you feel about the legitimacy of the 74-page study here.